


No Guarantee of Efficiency

by Imgonnabeyourbubblegumwitch



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, 500 Words Challenge, Character Death, M/M, Q's age, iPod Shuffle Tuesday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 20:24:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11676444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imgonnabeyourbubblegumwitch/pseuds/Imgonnabeyourbubblegumwitch
Summary: 5 (+ 1) times Q's age was brought up.





	No Guarantee of Efficiency

**Author's Note:**

> iPod Shuffle Tuesday (500 words inspired by a song title)  
> Song: What's My Age Again - blink 182
> 
> Word Count: 500 (dead on!)

1\. His Team  
When he’d first been introduced as the new quartermaster his team had had their doubts. Age was no guarantee of efficiency he'd told them with more assuredness than he felt. They hadn’t believed him, until that one mission when the improvements he’d made to their systems saved the lives of three agents. Not one of them commented on his age after that.

2\. 002  
When 002 got brave and asked if Q was actually old enough to purchase the guns he tinkered with, Q didn't respond. Instead he messed with his gadgets. Nothing that would put him in harm’s way of course, because Q was a professional, but enough to be irritating. It was a calculated kind of irritating. The bugs he’d engineered seemed like errors in the software, but Q knew 002 was far too much of a wimp to ever bring up technical problems. It was the perfect revenge.

3\. James  
James liked to tease his boyfriend about his age. Q wasn’t sure if this was because James enjoyed being the only one he let (for the most part) get away with it, or because in actuality James was kind of insecure about it. Bond wasn’t old in general terms but he was getting on within his line of work. James had laughed it off with a quip when Alec had accused him of being a cradle-snatcher, but since then Q could tell the age difference had been playing on his mind.

4\. Eve  
Eve wasn’t all that much older than Q. Q knew this because he’d had a glance over her personnel file when he’d been updating security on that part of the system. Yet when she brought up some TV show from her childhood Q had never heard of she’d laughed and commented that she’d forgotten how young Q was. Q let it go because it was Eve, and there was no-one else he could bitch about Bond to over Margaritas, and besides she kept him entertained during boring meetings with emails about the latest episode of whatever they were watching at the time, and a snarky evaluation of the other departmental head’s ties.

5\. T  
It had been left to Tanner to tell Q he’d been handpicked for a super-secret special mission, perhaps because they thought Q was least likely to murder him, or maybe Tanner had just drawn the short straw. It took less than thirty seconds for Q to deduce he’d been chosen because he was the only one young enough to convincingly play the role. He’d done as he they’d asked with little grace, but he’d forced the department to foot the bill for the copious amounts of alcohol he insisted someone of his age would like, totally drink.

* * *

 

+1. M  
There were times M loved his job. There were times when he hated it.  
_He was so young_ , he thought, as he closed Q’s file for the final time and put out the call for a new quartermaster.


End file.
